


McDanno: Sweet

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Community: 1_million_words, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:50:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 15,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various shorts written for the 1_million_word comm that range from family fic to not-all-<i>that</i>-porny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That Place you Love that Doesn't Exist

They start two weeks after Danny meets him, and it’s scary and enticing how fully _there_ he is.

No Rachel, no power struggle, no bad guys; Just the three of them, and it’s always Saturday. They climb Diamond Head, ride horses at Kualoa Ranch, teach Gracie to body surf. Sometimes Steve steals a quick kiss, runs a hand over his shoulder with a smile that promises more and it's so real he can smell the sea, feel the sun and his too-brief touch.

Danny’s now the champion of not waking up. 

Steve’s began a week earlier. There are never words, just him lying on his side, strong arms around him from behind, a leg slotted through his and it’s so close -- the second when he’ll be taken.

He doesn’t have to turn to see who’s nipping at his earlobe, pushing on his hip for leverage, pressing inside him so slowly that, oh _hell_ ….it feels so good he could climb the walls with his fingernails.

Unfortunately, those are the hardest ones _not_ to wake up from.

_“Scientists have news for people who experience lucid dreaming. A new study reveals….”_

They like to listen to news radio on long rides, but today their fingers bump as they race for the ‘scan’ button.

“I uhm…” Steve clears his throat. “Maybe some music.”

“Yeah,” Danny looks out the window. “Music sounds good.”


	2. The Brochure that Saved Them

“Are you out of your impractical, overly-optimistic mind?”

Danny stood in the kitchen of his apartment, flipping through the Alaska Cruise brochure. It was covered in pictures of ginormous bears, whales, and a tiny cruise ship lit up like a birthday cake in the twilight.

“We’d kill each other before that boat made it back to port. If something didn’t eat us first. Besides, you and me on the water? There’s history not to be repeated there.”

“Maybe give it more then ten seconds thought?” Steve reached, tracing the words under the picture of the ship. “It _is_ an Inner Passage cruise. The sexy nature…”

“Stop it!” Danny partially objected as Steve spun him around.

“…of the name _alone_ …” He pushed Danny down flat on the counter. “Shouldn’t that be enough, babe?”

The laughing and wrestling ensuing turned to grunts, hisses and a pre-dinner screw on the couch. The brochure got lost in the sweaty shuffle.

Danny found it jammed between the cushions months later, weeks after the fight that had them both walking on eggshells; colleagues but not lovers, barely able to discuss anything personal without a shouting match.

He picked up the phone.

“We need to talk. I know, I know, but _shut_ up. We have to talk. Where? I think… I think we should talk in Anchorage. We should take our vacation time and take that stupid fucking cruise and … see if we can fix things. ‘Cause we’re not going to the way we’re going.”

Steve surprised him with a ‘yes,’ a grumbled yes torn from his stubborn heart, but a yes, and Danny found himself reaching for a credit card, dialing the 800 number on the booklet.

Sometimes you have to get way away from it all to save what you’ve got back home. And that was going to happen. Even if he had to risk getting eaten by a polar bear.


	3. Eternity in an Hour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment fic written for the 'Say What? Friday Quote' challenge posted by tkeylasunset on the 1_million_words community. The quote from William Blake begins the story.

_To see a world in a grain of sand,  
And a heaven in a wild flower,  
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,  
And eternity in an hour._

Danny never forgot where he was when he got the message: Sitting in his car, facing out toward the parking area at Kailua beach dumping sand from his shoes and watching it fall. He was thinking of hourglasses and time.

He’d taken a mental break from the case he was working, and somehow it burned into his brain the way the grains bounced around the phone he’d set on the ground, how the words just appeared on the screen: _“He’s here!”_

He drove like a maniac - for him at least; stopped to buy flowers at a stand along the way. The scent of them filling the car – so fragile and lovely- it cut through his frustration at the traffic as he got closer, at his gnawing annoyance he hadn’t been called sooner so he could worry in person.

Then he was there and bursting into room R238 to the sight of her asleep and Steve a few yards away with a finger to his lips and a baby in a tiny onesie dwarfed in his arms.

“She just fell asleep.” Steve whispered, pointing with one elbow toward the hospital bed, and Danny collapsed into the chair next to Steve’s, the flowers forgotten in his lap.

“Look at that head of hair….” Danny reached out and traced the tiny face with a finger. “What color are his eyes?”

“Blue,” Steve said. “But that could change, you know? Want to hold him?”

“No hurry. Once I take him you’re not getting him back, so enjoy.”

Danny took his grandson’s hand in his and the sight of it so small against his palm – he had to fight the urge to burst out crying. Someone new to fret for, to pray for, to adore beyond reason. Grace's son.

It hadn’t been an hour since the text message hit his phone, but the whole universe had changed. _His_ universe, at least.


	4. Feral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Word of the Day challenge, the word being Feral.

An unfortunate side effect of the beautiful weather is strays. Danny adds it to his list of reasons to scowl at this place, because one of those random balls of fur is breaking Gracie’s heart.

“He’ll _starve_ , Danno.”

She’s crouched in their yard, near tears, holding out grouper from last night’s dinner. The little grey tiger kitty isn’t running, but he isn’t coming any closer, either.

And aw, _shit_ , it is cute; all pointy ear, flicky tail and pink tongue, meowing.

“Sweetie, you have to understand - they go feral. They don’t want our help. They can’t… bond.”

Danny feels Steve slide up behind him to whisper in his ear.

“You better hope her taste for strays goes away before she starts dating.”

“Sweet mother of _God_ ,” Danny shoots him an elbow and Steve just laughs, arms going around him. “You will pay dearly for putting that thought in my head.”

“Relax. Some of us with that affliction end up doing okay. I caught you before you went feral.”

“Not by much.”

The kitty is in a carrier that day, at the vets overnight, and sleeping at Grace’s feet by Saturday. She’s decided she wants to be a vet someday.


	5. I'll bet you fifty bucks....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I knew I'd blipped over a recent one when I posted these last night. Written for the Word of the Day challenge: Divulge.

“What do you mean, you can’t _divulge_ it?” Danny shouted into his phone, a hand on the bullpen computer. “Your unnamed source might be able to crack our case in about five seconds flat. So you’ll _vulge_ right now, jackass, or _vulge_ when I slap a court order on your desk.”

He looked up to see Steve heading his way, a tiny grin on his face. Danny rolled his eyes, like ‘can you _believe_ this yutz?”

“Fine – see you in an hour. Sooner if the judge is skipping lunch today.”

By the time he hung up Steve was rather closer than Danny expected, hips nudging him toward the computer and a hand reaching back to cup his ass, squeezing lightly.

“What, what…. _what_ are you doing? We are at work, Steven.”

“Alone at work. Think you could recreate that for me later? That whole, forceful, ‘you’re gonna give me what I want’ thing?”

He wanted to tell him to grow the fuck up, but with those eyes so happy and hungry and that hand vaguely hinting at maybe doing some wandering, Danny opted to lean in for a kiss instead.

“You like that?” he asked between nips and sucks. “’Cause I can bark at _you_ , if … maybe… you know… if that’s something you think you might…”

Steve was busy sighing out a long ‘mmmm,’ so they were both a little confused at where the sound of someone clearing their throat was coming from.

“Uh-oh,” Danny said against Steve’s lips. Neither of them moved, but Steve chanced a look behind him at the door. “That them?”

“Yup.”

Chin and Kono, back from lunch twenty minutes early. 

“Pay up,” Kono said, eyes on Steve and Danny and one hand out. Chin silently took out his wallet and forked over two twenties.

“I’ll have to get you the other ten later.” Chin said and they each walked to their offices. 

“Aw hell,” Danny leaned against the computer. “Looks like _we_ revealed a little more than we planned to today….”

“They already knew anyway,” Steve tugged him toward the door, grinning. “C’mon, let’s go get a name out of that reporter.”


	6. The Play's the Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the 'Say What? Friday Quote' on the 1_million_words community forum. The quote in question follows the story.

_Scene One: A Tuesday afternoon inside a local theater. Two members of H50 climb a metal ladder fastened to the back wall. Above them: Rows of lights on sliding rails, with a very narrow, unprotected catwalk encircling the back of the room over the stage and beams that workers walk across to adjust them. Below: a theater troupe rehearses._

Steve: Not sure why we’re here. We know the murder weapon was a three hundred pound light fixture and that someone sawed through the metal arms holding it up.

[ _Steve glances down at where Danny is climbing right behind him_ ]

Danny: Yeah, but what we don’t know is if maybe a piece of evidence landed on one of the beams below it. It hit me once we got back –maybe we missed something up here.

[ _Steve steps smoothly from the ladder to the catwalk_ ]

Steve: So we’re looking for... what?

[ _Danny takes a deep breath and a terrifying side-step, grabbing at Steve’s t-shirt for balance as he joins him_ ]

Danny: Bolts, or a piece of the fixture maybe. Anything big enough it might have a print on it, or… _shit_ that’s a hell of a long way down.”

[ _Steve strides around the catwalk toward the where the light fell_ ]

Steve: “So don’t look down, D. Which play is it they’re doing?

[ _Danny shakes his head, following slowly_ ]

Danny: Are you serious? Only maybe the most famous work in Western theater, flat out ever….

Steve: Don’t give me grief, Danny, I know it’s Shakespeare. Doesn’t mean I can pick out my Macbeth from my King Lear in thirty lines or less.

Danny: Well, it’s kind of funny you don’t recognize it ‘cause it’s Hamlet and… now that I think about it, you two have a boatload in common.

Steve: You’re saying I’m a moody ancient Danish prince?

Danny: I’m saying, not to put too fine a point on it or bring up hurtful things, that, well, babe, you both grapple with the brutal deaths of your fathers. And with uncle figures that didn’t do you any favors. Oh, and moms you should both _definitely_ get a do-over on. That’s for sure.

Steve: Lots of people have family stuff, Danny…

Danny: You both have girlfriends you claim to be just friends with… ad nauseum.

[ _Steve stops, glancing back at him with a ‘you didn’t just go there’ look]_

_Steve: Are you done?_

_[ _Danny starts talking fast]_ _

__Danny: And you both run around all reckless, with disregard for your mortal coils._ _

__Steve: Mortal co… are you _kidding_ me with this?_ _

__Danny: All I’m saying is if you add it up, it’s almost… spooky._ _

__Steve: So that makes Kono and Chin…._ _

__Danny: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Your loyal guard._ _

__Steve: And who are you, D?_ _

__Danny: Horatio, of course._ _

__[ _Danny rolls his eyes when Steve gives him a ‘yeah, and who is that’ look]__ _

___Danny: He’s only Hamlet’s best friend. The one person he never doubts for a second. Hamlet freaking _dies_ in Horatio’s arms and entrusts his story to him… tells him to keep his memory alive…_ _ _

___[ _Danny looks up and sees Steve staring at him, a crooked smile on his face, eyes damp, blinking]__ _ _

____Steve: Yeah. Sounds about right._ _ _ _

____Danny: Stop it. Seriously, stop giving me that look. I’m dizzy enough up here with a foot wide piece of metal between me and a split open skull…._ _ _ _

____[ _Danny’s voice gets increasingly frantic as Steve leans in to kiss him, and in the many seconds they snog high above the unfolding action below he seems to forget his fear of falling_ ]_ _ _ _

_____Scene Three: Danny sits in the passenger seat of his own car as Steve drives them back to base. He’s smiling down at the chunk of metal he spotted on the beam—a broken off piece of a highly effective manual saw that is covered in dried blood. It's a clue he’s confident will help them I.D. their killer. He looks up when he feels Steve sneaking glance at him as he drives._ _ _ _ _

____Steve: That was a fine piece of detective work, man. Pretty noble use of your faculties – almost godlike in apprehension….”_ _ _ _

____Danny: Okay, smartass. You know Hamlet scene for scene, don’t you?_ _ _ _

____Steve: All the tragedies. Word for word, pretty much._ _ _ _

____Danny: So why’d you put me through that fifty feet up?_ _ _ _

____[ _Steve’s right hand leaves the wheel to run over Danny’s shoulder and arm, to rest on and squeeze his thigh_ ]_ _ _ _

____Steve: Just wanted to make sure you knew your role, H._ _ _ _

____Danny: Did you just call me….stop that._ _ _ _

____Steve: Why? Why shouldn’t I call you ‘H’ for a while?_ _ _ _

____Danny: Because it’s stupid and pretentious, maybe. And people will ask why you’re doing it and I’ll be the mook having to explain it and why are you grinning like that? Why?”_ _ _ _

____Steve: Just wondering if Hamlet had this much fun playing with Horatio._ _ _ _

____~~fin~~_ _ _ _

_____What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me— nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so._ _ _ _ _


	7. Fooling around... with Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for a quote prompt on the 1_million_words community. Quote follows the story.

“We’ve crossed a line I’m not comfortable with. Not at all.” 

Danny spun some of his pasta carbonara onto his fork just _so_ as he said it, popping it in his mouth as Steve gave him a ‘yeah?’ look. 

They were sitting hip to hip, feet up on Danny’s coffee table, Steve flicking through the Netflix ‘What’s New’ menu.

“I’m not seeing a line,” Steve said. “Of any kind. So you’re going to have to tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

“This is our regular, standing, Thursday night date,” Danny nodded around the room in general. “When we first hooked up, that meant going somewhere fun. Like that cigar bar. Or the steakhouse. Then we ratcheted it down to ordering in, and one of us picking a movie– something special, something the other one hasn’t seen, right? And that’s cool. It’s still _sharing_. But, now? You’re just searching up some random, crappy thing to hit ‘play’ on, to fill time ‘til we fuck.”

“Overly sensitive, much?” Steve shot him a look. “Feeling hormonal tonight?”

“Don’t deflect. It was your week to pick the movie,” Danny was undeterred. “And you didn’t. Pick. Anything.”

“Maybe we’re past the point of needing entertainment? Or excuses.” 

Steve divested Danny of his plate and his glass of red wine. He half flung them across the table, dropping down over him, Danny laughing softly at the gesture full of overkill. They began to naturally twist sideways, legs tangling until all the best parts were touching.

“ _Geez_ ,” Steve flicked opened Danny’s shirt, flipped aside a collar to dip in for a lick and some random bites between kisses. “How pissed would you have been if I’d forgotten dinner?”

“I’d be walking for my car with my keys in my hand,” He tugged upward on Steve’s t-shirt, and Steve’s arms flew up to help him flip it away. “I’d leave your ass like _that_ …”

“Sure,” Steve murmured as they started grinding, their sighs and the pace both picking up. “Sure you would.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the quote of the week was awesome, and is as follows: "There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection is the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted." _~Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour_
> 
> It reminded me, too, of my favorite line from "Chicago" which is where I got the title: "Anyway, I started fooling around... then I started screwing around... which is fooling around without dinner." 
> 
> :)


	8. You do get the craziest ideas...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So I set out to write PWP and this came out instead....

Danny kicked his shoes off before he took the stairs and then stripped to his boxers in the bathroom, lights off, before sliding oh so carefully into bed. Steve sputtered and rasped out a sound as he did, one that sounded something like ‘szchssolllnnnk’ and Danny smiled, settling in on his back, eyes closing.

It wasn’t primarily concern for Steve’s sleep cycles that made him smile. It was the fact that he could now drift off without having to talk through his eveni…..

“How was the recital?”

Jesus, H. Danny’s body flew three inches straight up in the air. At least that’s how it felt. The shot of adrenaline zinging from somewhere mid-gut straight to his brain as he flopped back down was a ton and a half of fun, too. 

“Sorry, D,” Steve chuckled as Danny collapsed, muttering words not fit for polite company. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“How do you _do_ that? You’re like a … huge, awkward cat. You were just snoring.”

“Situational awareness,” Steve had already been on his side, facing Danny, and he closed the slight distance between them now-- an arm going around him, a leg hitching over him slightly. “If you’d slept some of the places I’ve slept….”

“I know,” Danny murmured it. “I’m sorry. But you get me every time with that. The recital was beautiful. And it sucked. I’m fine with driving her home after a weekend, but seeing her for a couple of hours for some school event and dinner and then walking away, watching them all leave together? It….”

“I know. Wish I could have gone.” Steve leaned up on one elbow and kissed him long enough to change the subject. 

Then he lay back down and was so quiet that Danny wasn’t sure he was still awake. Until…

“Mary came by to visit tonight,” Steve said, and he sounded _so_ much less than happy about it.

“Oh, yeah?” Danny was surprised. She’d been on the island for a while and had kept very much to her own business, whatever that was. 

“She came to tell me about her new boyfriend,” Steve sounded sad and disappointed and almost too horrified to go on. “He’s … he’s a snake handler.”

“A…”

“Snake. Handler. In a circus. A traveling circus. I swear to God, Danny…”

“I have at least three jokes that just popped into my brain. Do you want to hear…”

“I don’t know why you even want to hang around with someone like me, with my … crazy family.”

“You are not your family. I am not my family,” Danny pushed at Steve, giving just enough separation to make eye contact with him again. “Listen, I love my folks but there is no one, seriously, no one who can drive me up one wall and down the other faster than they can. Not even you.”

“We could do better, you know.”

Steve said it so quietly, and the implications were so very, very… vast that Danny found himself blinking, trying to get his eyes to focus again.

“You aren’t seriously suggesting…”

“We get a surrogate and we both donate the… building materials and sometimes, you know, it sometimes works out where it’s fraternal twins. And even if it doesn’t, whatever happens… it’d be a blessing. Right? And siblings for Grace, and…”

Danny was leaning up over him now, most interested in hearing how Steve would wrap up this thought. Most interested.

“We can’t do any worse than they did. And it’d give us someone else to focus on. It might make the rest of the world seem smaller. Less important.”

“You got that part right,” Danny said. “Can I have more than thirty seconds to think about it?”

“Of course,” Steve flipped onto his stomach and wrapped himself around his pillow and was gone again, back in szchssolllnnnkland in a minute flat.

Danny didn’t sleep for quite some time after that. He lay there and wondered if they had it in them. If _he_ had it in him to go there again. He made a note to ask Steve if he understood that they puked and shat, sometimes copiously, and screamed their lungs out for a significant amount of time. 

Then he contemplated why the idea of Steve holding a newborn should suddenly look so fucking hot inside his head.

The only way he managed to nod off was to tell himself one of two things would happen: Either Steve would come to his senses or he’d insist on talking it over. And if the later happened, well…. the man who used to have an actual allergic reaction to relationships coming up with this? 

How could he ever say no?


	9. Memorial Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holiday traditions are complicated in the McGarrett family. Written for the Word of the Day on the 1_million_words community, the word being Memorial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I stay away from the fine points of canon, usually, and I know the one scene I saw featuring Steve's father's grave didn't include a stone for his mother. Just thought how a tradition like Memorial Day might be complicated for him, and it led to this.

“How do you want these arranged, babe? Orange in the middle? White around the edges?” 

Danny was pulling tropical flowers from their little green, plastic containers and shaking the roots free in preparation; alstroemeria, carnations --- he was more used to planting peonies and petunias, that’s what you did for your family back home, but here you needed plants that could stand up to the sun.

They’d already visited the sites where Steve’s grandparents lay, and refurbished all the flowers there. Now they were by his dad’s marker.

He looked up when Steve didn’t answer and saw him frowning, fingers automatically digging up the old roots and dead plants under his father’s headstone, his eyes a few feet away locked on a different piece of granite.

“Steve, you with me, here?” 

It was a rhetorical question. He knew Steve’s mind was somewhere between here and Shanghai. 

“They removed the date for me. They cut it out. I put in a request a couple of months ago, but I never heard if it got done….” 

Steve stopped digging and stood up, walking over to the stone with his mother’s name on it. There was a hole now where her date of death had been, patched with a piece of similarly colored stone. He silently ran his fingers over the rectangular cut, and Danny noted that while the date had been removed, there were no signs the ground had been disturbed.

“Had any thoughts about what you’ll do… you know… with the plot? Overall?”

“You mean the coffin buried there?” Steve’s frown deepened, if that was possible. “Leaving it. A monument to a lie. She doesn’t deserve that spot, anyway. She doesn’t deserve to rest next to dad.”

Danny kept divesting the flowers of their pots, not sure what to say. He wanted to go over and run a hand over that back, to plant a kiss near his ear to try to break the mood, but guessed it wouldn’t go over well. He still wasn’t confident about routine shows of emotion – still wasn’t sure about a lot of things between them. The only thing he knew for a fact was he wasn’t the first and probably wouldn’t be the last person in that position where Steve was concerned. There was some comfort in that.

“Even a simple family tradition, it’s complicated for you, isn’t it?” Danny asked and Steve huffed out a sound of agreement, crouching back down to clear the last of the weeds from beneath his dad’s marker. “Ever want to just take off… get away from it entirely?”

“No. I want answers. Then I can go. Maybe I will someday. After I get answers.”

“You will,” Danny said, handing him the first couple of flowers and he saw Steve blink, shake his head like he realized how in his own brain he’d just gotten. It seemed to visibly dawn on him that he was so broody he’d forgotten the friend kneeling next to him who had been to every family plot with him today, who would go home with him later and do his best to make him laugh, make him feel safe.

“Sorry, Danny,” Steve said, and then to Danny’s amazement he knelt up a little, soil-stained fingers resting on Danny’s shoulders as he reached in to kiss him, brief but sweet. “And yeah, orange in the middle, white around the outside.”

“Huh. You do listen to me.”

“Sometimes,” Steve said, voice lighter if not light. “Let’s get this done, okay, and go to my place? Sit and watch the water for a while, grill something?”

“Sounds good, babe. Fine by me.”


	10. Love Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve drops a bomb.

“You’re telling me this _now_?” 

Danny looked blown away, like he’d had a bomb dropped on him. Which, well, is exactly what had just happened.

It was an ‘I love you’ bomb.

Steve was pretty sure the bomb itself wasn’t the only thing making Danny turning pink and flustered. It was the moment at which Steve had pulled the pin.

“It’s awful timing, I know. I’m sorry…” Steve stayed put, half leaning and half sitting on the edge of his own desk, arms folded, staring down at his own feet. “…it just slipped out.”

He wished Danny would rant at him. That was familiar territory. This miserable, potent silence was an uncharted land and it felt like a dangerous place where anything could happen.

“It’s a first, I’ll give you that,” Danny finally said, voice surprisingly calm. “I’m willing to bet that no one, ever, in the recorded history of salaried employment has ever told their boss they’re putting in their notice and heard him say ‘You can’t quit, I love you.’”

“Oh, D, that’s probably not true,” Steve shook his head adamantly, his face straight. “Pretty sure it happens more than you’d think. Maybe all the time. Maybe a few times a _day_ somewhere in the world. Right? That’s what people do, they go to work and they meet someone and they ….”

“Yeah, they fall in love and they TELL the person. That’s my point, you emotionally fractured, overgrown BOY blockhead. They don’t wait until the other person QUITS…” 

Danny was winding up, getting louder, an arm waving and the other one preparing to join it. 

“They say it when they first feel it. Or maybe they wait a little to be sure. I’m talking a week or a month, or… Jeez, who knows? But at some point, once they’ve assessed the situation they freaking SAY something, they drop a hint, take a CHANCE. What they DON’T do is wait and hold it aside for years and years and then announce it right after the potential object of their affection tells them ‘I wanted to give you a good couple of months’ notice.’

Steve fought to keep the grin spreading from his heart to his lips in check but couldn’t.

“What? Why, tell me, why? Why are you chuckling at me and smiling with that stupid, goofy, pretty face? What is so damned funny….”

“I’m relieved. You’re yelling. You were so quiet, I was … it had me worried you’d bolt or deck me or something.”

“Deck you? You think I’d… because you’re a man and I’m a man? You think I’m the kind of person who would…”

“No, of course not. But people have very strong reactions. They don’t even know how they’re going to react, sometimes.”

“Well I wouldn’t. Ever. I _would_ punch you. I _have_ punched you. But not for that reason.”

“Yeah,” Steve murmured it. “I know.”

“Aw crap.”

“What?”

“You just told me you love me and I called you a child and a blockhead. Then I called your face goofy.”

Danny slumped down on the couch.

“It’s okay. Really.” Steve joined him and Danny jumped, and Steve held his hands out in front of him as he sat. “Not going to pin you to the couch and kiss you or anything, I swear.”

“Sorry.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “Let’s walk through this. Tell me why you’re quitting, again.”

“I just told you two minutes ago.”

“I was a little stunned, too, all right? Tell me again.”

“Because Rachel and Stan are moving and this time it’s happening. They’re moving to L.A. and yeah, I was ready to call my lawyer but Grace said not to. She’s only got a year and a half left in high school and she doesn’t want to spend what’s left of her childhood with us fighting over her.”

“So maybe you let her go. And you don’t go. You stay.”

“No way.”

“Danny….”

“I did it before, I can do it again…”

“You did what ninety percent of dads never would have dared, and it’s the first thing I noticed about you. Liked about you. But she was ten years old. She’s what, now? Fifteen? Is she even going to go to college in L.A.? What if she moves to, say, New York in two more years? Gonna follow her there, too?”

“Yeah. Maybe I will.”

“Gonna go on her honeymoon someday?”

“Perhaps.”

“Catch the baby in the delivery room?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“And what if there aren’t any decent jobs on the LAPD? You’re going to sacrifice a great career to be a beat cop again? Or to work security at a mall or a club?”

“There’s no dishonor in any of those…”

“Of course not, but that’s not my point, Danny. My point is you made a huge sacrifice for her once but it made sense then. It made a difference in the whole rest of her life. But she’s almost grown up. Do you know if she even wants you to move to L.A. for her?”

The pause this time was even longer than when Steve dropped the bomb.

“No,” Danny sat forward, elbows going to his knees, head in his hands. “Shit, I didn’t even ask. And I’ll have to ‘cause she’d be too afraid to hurt my feelings to come out and say it if she doesn’t….”

Steve got up and walked to his desk and brought back the resignation letter Danny had handed him less than five minutes ago.

“Maybe hold on to this overnight? You can always give it back to me. If you have to.”

“Thank you,” Danny took it, folding it, fingers running over the seam again and again. “That was big of you, taking yourself out of it. Thinking about my career when I was too obsessed to even consider it.”

“No problem,” Steve nodded, suddenly very interested in his own cuticles. “You’ve… always had my back, so…”

“There’s still a really big elephant in the room. Isn’t there?”

“Yeah,” Steve huffed. “You could say that.”

“Just so you know, I’ve never so much as…”

“Never?”

“No.”

“Not once?”

“Just said it, Steve, but once again, no.”

“Huh. I thought maybe.”

“But I have had dreams. About you.”

If there had ever been this many pregnant pauses in their conversations, ever, Steve wanted to know when that was because he was pretty sure this was a first.

“Um, well, Danny that’s… I don’t think it’s unusual. People fantasize about all sorts of shit they’d never actually…”

“’Dreams’ is stretching it,” Danny barreled through. “Because technically if you’re wide awake and in the shower it’s not a dream, right? So… yeah. There’s that.”

“Yeah?” 

“Uh. Yes. Can we leave it there and talk about it later?”

“Sure,” Steve got up and reached back a hand to pull him along and Danny took it. They hit the lights off together on the way out of the office.

“And whatever way it goes…. If I stay or leave, we do have to talk this out.”

“We don’t _have_ to do anything, Danny, either of us.”

“Yeah, we do. ‘Cause even if I move, I’m not leaving you behind. Never planned to. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, but he had to look down and away as he did. “Got it. Glad to hear it.”


	11. The Rusty Scupper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Word of the Day challenge on the 1_million_words community on LiveJournal. The prompt word was 'scupper'

“Why would you call a restaurant ‘The Filthy Drain Pipe?’” Danny asked.

He was watching Steve stare at the yellow umbrella on a stick the waitress had delivered along with Steve’s Sea Breeze as he spun it in super fast circles between his fingers.

“Excuse me?” Steve didn’t even look up as he stopped twirling it suddenly and dipped in, blowing a stream of fine bubbles through the tiny hole in the middle of the stick.

“Oh, that’s… nice. Very mature. What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m making a useless thing useful,” Steve sat back to respond. 

“How is blowing bubbles into a drink useful?”

“Is it annoying you?”

“Yes.”

“There you go. Love it when you get annoyed and your cheeks turn pink and your eyes go ... slitty.” 

Steve leaned in again as he answered, locking eyes with Danny this time as his lips wrapped around the stick right where it met with the top of the paper umbrella. 

Danny tried not to laugh and failed as the bubbles resumed.

“It’s horrifying that you’re even goofier on vacation. Positively… terrifying.”

“Let's go to the Statue of Liberty next.”

“Really? You want to? Jeez, it’s always a mob scene. The lines…” He scowled, then saw the tiny look of disappointment flitting over Steve’s face before Steve caught himself and masked it. 

Then Danny did the math: Going right to work for Five-0 after years of hard training and time in the military; his family falling to hell when it did…..Steve’s last real vacation had to have been over half his life ago.

“Sure. Whatever. Let’s go see Miss America after lunch,” Danny tried to keep his voice casual. “Never did get an answer to my question.”

“The Rusty Scupper?” Steve nodded toward the restaurant sign hanging over the pier in front of them. “Rust isn’t filthy, it’s … rust. And a scupper is a cute, tiny part of a huge ship, right? Diminutive and sweet. Like you.”

“You did not just call me….” 

He never got the rest of the sentence out. Steve had abandoned the umbrella in favor of Danny's mouth, and as Danny kissed him back in broad daylight and on his own turf he realized with sinking and rising heart that he probably couldn't pretend this was all just about lust anymore. Not with anyone that goofy.


	12. When you wish...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the weekend challenge on the 1_million_words community. The prompt was 'When you wish..."

"Listen to that."

"To what?"

"Exactly," Danny said.

 

They'd abandoned the chairs to sit on a blanket on the beach, enjoying the first sunset after the completion of the Williams Clan Summer Invasion of Oahu. Danny's parents got a hotel room, but had then spent every waking, non-working hour of the past ten days with him. The McGarrett-Williams household was overrun with air mattresses and half unpacked bags. Danny's brother crashed in the living room, his favorite cousin from Long Island, Linda, and her husband and their four month old twins were in the downstairs guest room.

It was endless sensory overload: the babies exercising their lungs, the guys all play-fighting, randomly punching arms or cuffing each other's ears until someone shouted "Ow, fuck, grow the hell up" and Danny's mother said "Boys," in a gently reproving tone that worked ...for a little while. Even Grace seemed overwhelmed by it all, hanging closer to Steve than usual when she visited like he was her lifeline to the familiar.

There were other moments, though-- sweet and peaceful and entirely disorienting in their own way: Danny and his dad talking quietly together one night, the look of pride in his dad's eyes as Danny shared war stories. And the way the brood was like a boisterous, sixteen armed beast, laughing at the same things, helping each other with the million little tasks that come from being far from home.

The morning before they'd all left, Steve returned from his AM swim to find Danny asleep on the couch, a burping rag over one shoulder and both babies out like little lights on his chest.

"I'm sorry, we've really wrecked your June, haven't we?" His cousin asked softly from the end chair where she was enjoying coffee and a few baby-free minutes.

"No," Steve realized he'd been staring at Danny, open mouthed. "Not at all."

There was no polite way to explain how his guts had just twisted at the thought of the things he couldn't imagine tolerating that Danny might still want. Oh, or how the sight of him covered in babies sent a zinging sensation straight through his body-- a desire to drag him upstairs and screw him shaky and breathless. Why the hell should THAT bring on THIS?

It was an additional mystery he didn't need in a time that left him feeling like an outsider in his own home.

But now the house felt like a shell. Too quiet. So what must it feel like to Danny?

"What are you staring at?" Danny asked and Steve startled.

"Nothing. Watching the sunset."

"No, you weren't. Sunset was over there," Danny pointed right. "Steven McGarrett, were you seriously just wishing on a star?"

"Um.... Yeah, no. I wasn't." he said, but he heard his own voice and the lie in it.

"You were! Tell me..."

"No!"

"You will, you'll tell me right now or..."

"Not going to happen, Danno so forg...." Steve was so busy avoiding looking at him that he didn't have time to react much beyond an 'ooof' sound when Danny pushed him on his back and climbed on top of him, knees tight around Steve's hips, hands reaching down to pin his arms.

"I think all the testosterone lingering in the house has you stuck in 'king of the hill' mode'" Steve said calmly.

"Tell me," Danny growled. "Or I swear to God there's a love bite in your immediate future that'll dictate your choice of shirts for a week."

"Your tactic is backfiring," Steve went mostly limp, only his hips moving, rocking lazily up against Danny. "See, with all the blood flowing south, my brain can't retain even basic short term... Upp, no. There it goes-- couldn't tell you if I wanted now, I don't remember..."

"I will get it," Danny leaned in to nip an earlobe and finish the sentence with lips pressed to his skin. "I'll pry it the hell out of you."

Steve went a little more loose under him and just when Danny was tugging his head back, going in for the kill he flipped them both over and the wrestling match was on-- a grunting, twisting struggle punctuated with more ooofs and choked off chuckles.

It wasn't like them, but then why should anything be normal at the moment?

~~~~~~~~~~

Danny surfaced the next morning on his side, facing the bedroom window, to two distinct but connected sensations: a vague sense of dread and a pleasant ache running from his thighs through his ass and into his lower back that he would love a chance to earn all over again.

He'd tugged Steve up the stairs by one enticing and much needed arm after their tussle in the back yard, planning to give him the sloppiest blow job ever in thanks for his patience. Steve apparently had other ideas, pressing him to the bed, barely slicking either of them in his haste, then fucking Danny on his back, his stomach, his side.

Danny considered himself no slouch but damn... when Steve went a little crazy like that it always left him a breathless, shaking mess.

He recalled making some very undignified sounds that would be painful to consider if it weren't for the sex haze blocking the fine points of that particular memory.

He'd pushed him too far, obviously. Overran what was still essentially Steve's home, less than a year after he'd moved in..

This was probably only the start. He'd take five big steps away from him. Crap. What if he had to find his own place again?

Worse yet...what if this was it?

Suddenly Danny couldn't breathe quite right.

"You awake?" Steve's voice cut into his downward mental spiral. "Danny?"

He flipped over to see Steve on his side, too, awake and waiting for him.

"I was thinking about how much you might be giving up, being with me," Steve said, unasked. "Last night, I mean. How I still can't feel plugged in to people emotionally the way you all seem to. I wished for you to not give up. On me."

"The you I met...." Danny reached to run a thumb over the little, vertical crease over the bridge of that nose. "There's no way he'd have ever said those words. And he sure as hell didn't wish on stars. "

"Not in a lot of years," Steve said.

"Gotta tell you, I'm relieved. I had us half broken up in my head after what I put you through."

"Ummm... Why?"

"Because of that Grade A ass pounding you gave me." Danny asked, surprised at how fast Steve jumped at the words, sitting up, looking horrified.

"Are you.. Did I...hell..."

"It's fine ... It's... It was awesome, actually," Danny said. "Except for the part where I thought maybe I'd broken us with my family."

"So you thought I couldn't take it..." Steve said. "And I thought maybe you'd give up on me?"

"Good thing I caught you star gazing," Danny said. "Or we'd have spent a week worrying for no reason."

"You're the one who's supposed to walk us through that shit..."

"Yeah?" Danny asked. "Maybe you need to start chipping in on that, too. Believe it or not, there are things I find it scary to say."

Steve didn't respond, just urged Danny to turn back over and pulled him in for a tight spoon.

"Want to go for a hike today? Spend our last day off somewhere green?" Danny asked.

It took a while to get an answer.

"No," Steve said. "Let's hit the couch and watch movies. And enjoy our place with just us in it."

Danny smiled and didn't say a word.


	13. Secrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a Happy Birthday fic for Simplyn2deep on LJ! A very happy birthday to you, ~~sorry for the angst a the end~~ and hope you like it! The birthday prompt I was working to is: "McDanno and Steve being really horrible at keeping secrets and Danny pokes fun at him for that."

~~*~~

“How’m I supposed to know what to wear?” Steve asked, his voice on the edge of sullen.

Danny counted to ten in the passenger’s seat, containing an eye roll and raising his left hand to give him a short, sharp ‘you have a point there’ half of a sideways wave.

“Fine. Wear whatever you would for dinner and drinks, okay? Nicer than a weekend afternoon thing, but not extra fancy. And that, buddy, is _it_ for the question and answer period. I know a verbal fishing expedition when I hear one. Hell, half my job is _instigating_ verbal fishing exhibitions and you know that.”

He was ad libbing now, because it was taking everything he had in him not to break into a grin. Especially with Steve glancing over every few hundred yards to give him the hardcore puppy eyes.

“So… _is_ it dinner and drinks?” Steve asked and Danny shot him a ‘you didn’t really try that feint, did you?’ face. “C’mon, D. I don’t get why you trust me enough to tell me we’re tossing Kono a thing, but not enough to tell me the details of the thing.”

This was not good. Steve’s eyes may be pleading, but the set of his mouth had that ‘I will not be denied” jaw thrust to it. Time to unleash the dogs of distraction: a blunt truth he’d bristle at, deny… and obsess on to the exclusion of all else.

“I’m withholding because you can’t keep a secret to save your life. You, my friend, seem to take an almost child-like _glee_ in accidentally, oh so casually, letting secrets slip. Your inner five year old? Absolutely nothing he loves more than a blown secret.”

“That’s not true and unfair and…”

“Yeah? Fifty bucks says Kono finds out, from you, the existence of said event within, say, twenty-four hours.”

“She absolutely will not.”

“Fifty bucks. Put your money where your stubborn mouth is and … I’ll have more cash in my pocket tomorrow.”

“You are so on.”

~~*~~

Steve was annoyed enough with him that he didn’t even suggest a beer or some beach time after work, which was just as well. There was a ton of prep work left to do; the venue to nail down, food and a huge surfboard shaped cake to buy and a dozen invited guests still to confirm, and Danny was taking most of it on himself.

He didn’t even have to coordinate with Kono. He just stopped her on her way by as he and Steve were headed to lunch the next day.

“So… Saturday…looking forward to it?” Danny coaxed and Kono nodded, smiling, but then looked embarrassed, sorry to be ratting out on Steve. “When did this one clue you in?”

“It’s not his fault,” Kono offered, contrite.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Steve seconded when Danny glared at him. “Kono said she had a date and all I was going to do was suggest maybe, possibly she might want to reschedule and before I knew it.…”

Danny had his hand out before the word ‘date’. Steve gave up and forked over the bills.

“Thank you,” Danny pocketed them. “And to show you I’m not all hard-ass, I’ll use part of my proceeds to buy us lunch.”

“Cool, that way I don’t have to go to the _bank_ , because someone has the last of my _cash_ …” Steve turned back to his office. “Give me a sec, okay? Forgot my phone on my desk….”

Kono let him get many steps away before she said anything.

“Do you really think this will distract him for two and a half more days? I mean… what are the odds he won’t Google the state web site and find out there isn’t really an award for marksmanship higher than the one I already have?”

“Oh, we’re so good. The date’s set, he’s sufficiently embarrassed not to want to talk about it anymore… he’ll never guess.”

“It’s sweet of you to come up with this, you know?” Kono gave his arm a squeeze as she went on her way. “To throw a him a party for our first full year as a team. You’re a good friend, Danny.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

She left and Danny was free to devote his gaze to watching Steve as he stood over his computer, checking his email on his desktop computer. He sighed slow and deeply at the sight; Steve’s casually graceful stance, his fingers lingering in his pocket to push the forgotten phone in a little deeper, the delicious, brooding frown on his lips and the fold between his eyebrows that Danny would literally _maim_ for the right to kiss.

Secrets, Danny thought… they’re overrated. 

He wished he weren’t so damn good at keeping them himself.


	14. The Terrible Atoll a Fight Can Take...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Weekend Challenge on the 1_million_words comm. The prompt: Two items - an atoll and a toothbrush.

Danny kicked hard with his feet, pulled with both arms but it was too late; he could gauge how far away he was from air, could see the sky above him through the pristine ocean water and he knew there was no way in _hell_ he would make it in time. 

He was going to drown.

He fought to hold his breath, but his lungs were bursting; not _begging_ for but _demanding_ oxygen. His body gave in to biological imperative, drawing in what felt like a gallon of seawater; salty, sun-warmed. 

He thrashed and kicked. This was it- his death throes.

“Je _ee-s_ us, D, stop it, _stop_ … kicking me! You’re _dreaming,_ Danny c’mon!”

Steve’s voice cut through his panic. He was still so deeply out that he could feel the warm, lapping water around him but, hey, Steve wouldn’t lie to him, would never say he was okay if he were actually drowning, so… 

He surfaced in Steve’s bed… _their bed_ … Steve urging him around on his side to make the small spoon, _please_ , Danny, c’mon….holding him tight and kissing his ear, his quivering cheek.

“What. The. Hell?” Steve asked, his own voice still sleep infused, a little shaky.

They’d slept through some bad nights with each other – colds, flu bugs, hangovers. This was their first official nightmare horizontal together.

“I was drowning,” Danny could still feel his heart pounding. “I was on a mission to clean all the coral on some…atoll. Fuck, I’ve never been to an atoll but I was paddling around cleaning every goddamned inch of that coral with a tiny toothbrush and then I went …too far…and…”

He was about to tell him of the horror, the terror of feeling himself dying but he stopped… well…. dead because Steve was laughing.

“You are _not_ amused by this. Tell me you’re not amused by this and _laughing_ at me or I’m gonna kick you on _purpose_ you big, goofy BUTThead….”

“Think about it,” Steve rolled away from him a bit, which Danny thought was probably wise at this point. “We have a _fight_ on the way home from work, wherein you tell me if I don’t stop eating food in your car, you’re going to make me clean it end to end with a toothbrush. _Then_ you _threaten_ to move to the other side of the world if I don’t start listening to you, so you _never_ have to see me again. _Then_ , when I put on my trunks and hit the water to get away from you for a few damned minutes, what do you do? You don’t stop fighting, you _chase_ me into the ocean and swim after me, _bitching_ at me the whole way….”

Danny flopped on his back, feeling boneless, feeling pissed at himself at what his dream had told Steve that he never would have volunteered. Not yet.

“You enjoying this?”

“What? That you got all pissy at me over nothing, but you’re the one having the nightmare? Feeling scared to lose me?” Steve was chuckling again, low and deep, like he might be on the verge of a laughing jag he couldn’t control. “Yeah. I’m loving it.”

“Aw, shit….” Danny found himself chuckling a little, too. “It was a beautiful place. The atoll. Like, ten times more beautiful then here.”

“Did you just call Hawaii beautiful?”

“I did. But this.. it was… wow. Deep blue and aqua and no one around just fish and clear, clear water….”

“I’ve been to places like that,” Steve spooned him again, nose nudging back and forth through the back of Danny’s hair. “We should go to one, someday. You know? Really get away from it all.”

“Maybe,” was all he got back.

“I’ll snorkel with you. You _won’t_ have to scrub the coral. And I won’t let you drown, D.”

“Okay. Sold.”

Steve fell asleep picturing them together on vacation. But really… he wasn’t holding his breath.


	15. My Little Runaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reward Fic for Heffermonkey, for her contribution to the Weekend Challenge. Her prompt for me: "Well there was this one time, when I was twelve, when I went on this really big adventure.....' What was the adventure?"

A week spent tracking down a missing kid seldom ended with happy news – but for once, this time, it had. The young boy had run away, and literally joined the circus – at fifteen he’d looked eighteen, and had the fake paperwork to 'prove' it. The 5-O team had put together the clues, found him before the troupe left for the mainland and delivered him safely home to his relieved parents.

It was unusual enough a story to occupy their Friday night happy hour conversation, and to still be on their minds when Steve and Danny crashed for the night.

“So you ran away from home, too? Big deal: Probably about every third kid runs away from home when they’re twelve, right? This kid… he did something pretty different, you have to admit.”

“Well, Danny, my running away… wasn’t without a degree of creativity.” Steve chuckled at his bedroom ceiling at the memory, his thumb rubbing slow circles at the nape of Danny’s neck, Danny’s head on his chest. “This… was a full-scale escape operation involving a pup tent, a weeks’ worth of food, supplies for maintaining a campfire…”

“Overboard. You went overboard on the simple act of running away. Shocking.”

“I got lost,” Steve’s voice was still amused, but maybe a little less so than a moment ago. “I was deep into Kaena Point Park by the abandoned railroad tracks, and I got turned around. Started going in circles. It was fine, really, ‘cause I had the food and I had the matches and…”

“Yeah, who needs parents? ‘Screw you mom and dad, I’m Steven J. McGarrett, I’m twelve, and I’m going all survivalist on your asses. That’ll show you for not letting me go on the class trip to Paris!’”

“But even though I had the fire and a full stomach… it was …. Um, really quiet out there. And dark. And every sound I heard, it was suddenly something or someone coming to kill me. In my head, you know?”

Danny stopped teasing and started drawing his own, small circles over Steve’s skin, on his opposite shoulder.

“It was the first time in my life I was actually…terrified. I was very glad to see a park police van the next day. And my mom….”

“Let me guess – your dad was pissed, but too relieved to show it. And Doris…”

“Oh, my God… she was so furious, D. You think you’ve seen her having a fit? You haven’t seen anything like the anger that poured out of her that day. My dad… he had to hold her back. She …was coming at me and she was ….growling….”

They were both on the edge of a laughing jag, picturing it. 

“She was gonna kill me with her bare hands. Now that she knew I was safe, she was absolutely going to kill me.”

“That’s…. awesome. I would pay actual cash to go back and time and see that.”

“Did you ever run away from home?”

“Nah. Slammed a few doors and took off with my buddies once in a while when I didn’t get my way. But I was always home for dinner. I, actually, didn’t give my parents too many grey hairs. I was a pretty good kid.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, D.”

Steve hit the bedside light and they both sank in, ready for sleep, enjoying the breeze through the window and the sound of the ocean.

“What?” Steve asked when Danny started chuckling uncontrollably again.

“With your permission… next time Doris comes over? I’m totally asking her about the time you ran away. You okay with that? It won’t be as good as watching her come at you back then but something tells me the look that’ll cross her face? It’ll be the next best thing.”

“Sure,” Steve sounded pleasantly amused by the idea himself. “Go for it, D. She can’t kill me now, I’m too big for her.”

“Yeah, and if you need me… I’ll have your back.”


	16. A Whole Lot of Things to Tell Him (When I Get Home)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Goneahead as a thanks for posting to the "Best of 2013" thread on LJ's 1_million_words comm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I used prompts from Kaige68, who pulled last sentences for me from a series of books called "Percy Jackson & the Olympians." The prompts: "So I could pack my bags for home," "He said 'I await you,'" "It sounds like we've got a lot to talk about," and "For once he didn't look back".

“I can’t wait to see you… to get home.”

Danny held his phone to one ear as he said it, and used his free hand to shovel things randomly into the suitcase on the bed in his childhood room. It had been wonderful spending time with his parents but…

“I'm here waiting for you, babe. Sounds like we have a lot to talk about? I take it … maybe some of your friends weren’t good with the news.”

Either Steve was getting ever better at unraveling clues in a very few words, or he could read Danny’s voice faster every day. Or both.

“You would be so, so right about that.”

He hoped Steve would let it go for now. It would be too embarrassing to tell him about the friend who laughed like his announcement about them was all a big joke, or the one who left the restaurant as soon as he could without being visibly, over the top rude.

“I knew I should have gone with you. I should have been there tonight.”

“Uh, no. I would not subject you to the utter nonsense that was ‘dinner with closed minded morons.’”

He remembered the one old buddy who had, at least, seemed genuinely concerned. He had taken Danny aside and suggested it might be about the stress of moving and things ‘going to crap’ with Rachel. 

“Listen, I gotta suggest it Dan; maybe a shrink might help?”

He’d been so kind and looked so worried that Danny had patted his arm and thanked him for caring. What he’d wanted to say was ‘maybe it’s you who should have your head examined,’ but he decided to save that one for someone who really deserved it.

“We should take a couple of days off – we’ll do nothing but eat and sleep and…”

“Correction: I’ll do nothing but eat and sleep. You’ll eat and sleep and swim fifty miles and surf a bit and…”

“Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, Mr. McGarrett,” Danny shut the suitcase and set it by the door, ready to head for the airport as soon as dawn arrived. And that would be none too soon. “It sure does.”

He’d come home and see his folks again. He’d bring Steve. Those ‘friends,’ tonight? Danny would mourn them, and then he wouldn’t look back.


	17. How Grace Joined the Surf Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written as a thank you to BlueDelft for her post on the "Best of 2013" thread on LJ's 1_million_words comm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written from a prompt by Haldoor - something with Steve and Danny with their toes in the sand, with a bit of a cargument to it. Not exactly cargument, but I like where it went and hope you do, too!

“No! How many times do I have to… no, no, no!”

“Danny, c’mon… even Rachel said yes.”

They were standing on the shore, toes in the sand, watching Grace a few yards out on a boogie board enjoying the placid last few late afternoon waves. Steve was suited up, barely out of the water himself. Danny was in slacks and a button down, purely an observer at this point but ready, mind you, to dive in if the gentle surf somehow turned treacherous. 

“It’s one thing for her to surf with you right there with her. But joining her school’s surf club?”

“Almost fifty years, Danno. That’s how long they’ve had a club at her school and guess what? All the kids have come home alive, all that time. I won’t lie, some of ‘em get there a little banged up but it’s no different than gymnastics or intramural skiing back where you’re from, right? She’ll be fine. And oh, by the way, like I’ve been telling you for months, she’s a natural.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh… yes. As in she could be as good as Kono someday.”

“Stop.”

“I’m serious. She has the comfort level and the sense of how to play the wave and… I wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true, you know that?”

“Yeah,” Steve could tell from Danny’s voice that he got that much, at least. “Really? You think she could be…”

“Who knows, maybe she’ll win a surfing scholarship? And meantime, whether she does or not – it’s a great skill for encouraging athleticism, and for making a more confident kid.”

“Rachel did say yes….”

“Plus, I promise to go to her first meets with you. I’ll be there with whatever you need to get through it – alcohol, smelling salts, physical restraints to keep you from jumping in with her…”

“You might need all of the above.”

The discussion ended there. 

Danny was so content and proud, watching her, that he never noticed Grace looking in toward Steve, or the tiny thumbs up Steve gave her behind Danny’s back.

All he saw was a beautiful smile. And a little girl who looked very happy bouncing on the waves. 

A natural.


	18. Girl of Scent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a Weekend Challenge on the 1_million_words comm. The challenge I was given was the story title "Girl of Scent" - and this is where it went for me.

“Holy freaking… _hell_ in a sexy damn hand basket, what is that?”

“What is what?” Steve had been standing over Danny, at Danny’s desk, trying to read the info on his computer screen. He jumped back now, arms out and hands up like he wasn’t sure what about him had brought on such a strong reaction.

“That….scent. That smell. It’s like ….sex and musk and flowers and …. _Jesus_ , Steve, that's ...obscene.”

“Oh,” he felt his face breaking into a grin. “That. Chin and I went to talk with the owners of the jewelry store that got robbed last week. It’s in the mall behind the cheesecake factory, you know? And…”

“And, what? You decided to stop and shop for cologne while you were there?”

“No, of course not. There was a girl at the place next to the bank and she… was the perfume person. Spritzing everyone. And … well, she was nervous, like it was her first day. She couldn’t have been more than about eight years older than Gracie and I got the feeling if she didn’t convince people to try their cologne pretty soon, maybe they’d fire her. Or at least, she seemed to think so. I felt bad…”

“So I have to be tortured all freaking morning? Have to breathe in something that makes me want to pin you down and fuck you stupid? Or vice versa? Actually… vice versa sounds better. Way, way better, God, please, you rotten… rotten bastard, doing this to me.”

“Oh, as if you don’t torture me at work all the time?”

“How? How do I…”

“Those pants? And the painted on shirts. Some days you turn just so or lean and…” Steve stepped back in and ran a hand down Danny’s back, and he shivered at the touch and the sweet, rich smell so close over him again and …oh…. 

“I can see them – you know? These two little divots in your lower back right over your ass and…”

“Lunch. One hour,” Danny got up and away from him, was in the doorway in a flash. “Lunch is at my apartment in one hour. No food, ‘cause I’ve got no groceries at the moment - just a long, hard screw so… I hope you had breakfast.”

~*~

“There they are,” Steve knelt between Danny’s legs on the bed, running his hands over his shoulders, his back, his ass, fingers finding the indentations just north of those cheeks, massaging them with his thumbs. “Missed you two. Good to see you…”

“You have been teasing me for ten damn minutes,” Danny was pulling in pillows, shifting restlessly. “If you don’t get in here and fuck me now I will hurt you. I swear I will…”

“Like this?” Steve pushed in and gave him a second to hiss and groan. Then he pushed again, dropping down over him as Danny found a rhythm and fucked him back, pulling him in the last little distance there was to go. “Yeah, like that… shiiiitttt, Danny, just like…that…yessss….”

~*~

They went in separate directions for the afternoon, but apparently their brains were in the same place.

“Stop at the mall on your way home,” Steve read the text message around 3:00 pm. “Pick up two bottles- one for your place one for my apartment.”

“Gonna spray it on the sheets when I’m away?” Steve keyed in.

“What’s it to you if I do?”

They seldom ever ended up in that mall together, but every time they did Steve gave Danny a little hip check on the way past that shop and Danny told him to grow the hell up.

Steve noticed about a month later that the perfume girl was wearing a suit, and a name tag that read ‘manager.’

“Well, you know what they say,” Danny had shrugged. “Sex sells, babe….”


	19. Through the Eyes of Babes...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a friendship fic, and a birthday gift for BlueDelft on the 1_million_words comm! It's set in S1 when Grace is still pretty young.

“Whadda ya mean a yeti would kick a zombie’s butt?” 

Huh?

Danny stopped in his tracks at the odd words coming out of his baby girl’s mouth. He turned with plates full of cake crumbs still in hand, halfway between Steve’s living room and his kitchen to watch her.

“What I mean, you huge goofball, is that it wouldn’t even be a fair match…” Grace was shaking the doll on the right from side to side to indicate it talking. “…a yeti would flatten a zombie with one paw, one swipe. Bam! No question, babe...”

It had been Steve’s idea to have her birthday party at his house- room for all the girls, let them play on the beach, yaddah, yaddah. And Danny appreciated it, he really did, but right now… he could still kick him.

“Uh, Steve…” He called it under his breath, hoping it was loud enough to catch his ear but not enough to interrupt Grace.

“Yeah?”

“Could you… um… come here?”

“ _Sure_ it would. _If_ it could get close enough,” Grace made the doll to the left wave an arm dismissively - or at least as dismissively as a Monster High doll could wave. “But all the zombie has to do is SET the YETI on FIRE. So your argument is invalid.”

Steve had walked over in time to catch that much, and was turning away again fast, unsuccessfully smothering a laugh.

“Oh, God… that’s…. scary.”

She even had the doll on the left arms up, as if its hands were on a steering wheel. 

“That’s it,” Danny handed him the plates. “We discuss nothing stronger than the weather when Grace is in the car with us from now on. And I drive - every single time. Got it?”

“Fine. But it takes two to argue, buddy. You were there, too. Every single time.”

But Steve took the plates. 

Danny just hoped he wasn’t going to have to listen to her presents bantering in their tones of voice the rest of the damn day.


	20. Downside Up...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written as a reward fic for lasairfhiona in the Thursday Tropes feature of the 1_million_words comm. The concept this Thursday was "Beautiful Dreamer," i.e. fics about one person awake and the other not. L's specific prompt was Steve and Danny surfing.

“Baah…lrghghhh…” Danny said. “Grmphkhlllsqsh….”

It was like swimming through Jello-O; he ‘came to’ flat on his back in the sand, just past the tree line. 

His head was on Steve’s lap. Steve’s swimtrunk-clad lap. Steve sitting with his back against a tree, in the shade, holding him.

“Why are you petting my hair?” 

Danny croaked and rasped, coughing up what was, apparently, more water. At least his earlier attempt and failure to get actual words out of his mouth made some sense- he’d almost drowned, maybe. 

“I figured it would raise your _ire_ ,” Steve wasn’t stopping, fingers still combing heavily through it, pads of his fingers pressing into Danny’s scalp, thumb caressing his temple as he did. “Piss you off enough to wake you up….”

“Stop it,” Danny tossed off Steve’s arm but he didn’t sit up because, well, he’d almost died, right? 

He deserved to get up slow.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Steve interjected. 

Of course he would think so. 

“Seriously, D; you just have an egg on your forehead. Maybe a concussion. Board caught you on your way into the water….”

Danny remembered now: riding the crest of the largest wave he’d ever worked up nerve to consider running – sun hot on his shoulders, wind at his back and it was perfect, it was glorious. Dreamlike. Until….

Flying up in the air. Falling. A dull, heavy pain that made him gasp and see actual stars - like people describe seeing right before they go out. Like the twinkles all around Bugs’ head in a Looney Tunes short. 

And then….this.

“We’ll go get you checked out to be safe. Have them do a CAT scan. Make sure your brain isn’t doing the back stroke inside your skull….”

“I don’t have a concussion.”

“How do you know?”

“Ask me. Anything. Ask me who the president is. Or who the president was in 1976. Or who won the World Series in…”

_“If you’re okay, then why aren’t you getting up?”_

Steve, the annoying, point-making jerk leaned in to ask it. To whisper it against Danny’s ear very slowly.

“I don’t think I should have to answer that. You almost got me killed,” he heard Steve snort at that one. “Keep rubbing my head.”

“I didn’t _stop_ rubbing your head,” Steve sounded deeply amused at him which was....even more annoying. “You stopped me.”

“Were you watching me? When I was almost dead? Watching me sleep?”

“And if I was?”

“Pervert.”

“Contrarian.”

Danny snorted at that, because…. busted.

“I didn’t drool or make stupid faces or anything… right?”

“No. You looked…vulnerable. Like when you were a kid, maybe.”

“Shut the hell up.”

Steve did – leaning in to softly kiss the egg and Danny could feel that his forehead really was very, very numb.

Fine. He’d go to the hospital if Steve insisted. But then they were going back to Steve’s house. And he was getting more touches and kisses- and not only on his damn head.

He'd almost died, for cripe's sake.....


	21. Father WhataPity and Nurse Danny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written for the 1_million_words weekend challenge prompts: Priest, Grocery Store, Gas Tanks. Zero disrespect is intended in this fic, I feel the need to say so.

“Uh, Steven, I’m gonna need you to take that off down here.”

Danny had been hoping he wouldn’t need to go there, to say it out loud, that somehow Steve would start pulling off his outfit from the undercover sting before he walked anywhere near the stairs but…of course not. Just his luck; bad as usual.

“You, uh… _what_?”

Steve had at least been making a gesture in the general direction of tugging off the white collar but now he stopped and his hands went to his hips, the way they did whenever he was setting up to analyze what was coming at him.

“I said I need you to take your clothes off down here. In the living room. Please.”

Normally, neither of them would even have their outfits from the undercover sting on anymore-- they’d have changed at HQ. But this operation had been so precise, involved so many agencies and bad guys and ….the processing and paperwork, it had taken all damn day, evening, night.

They’d looked at each other when it was finally done close to midnight and simply headed for Steve’s truck and home.

“And _why_ is it I can’t go change in our bedroom? Exactly?”

“Because when I pulled up to the scene... you know, right before the perps walked into the market? I saw you standing outside at the gas pump. From behind. In that getup. Only I didn’t know it was you. And my brain said, ‘oh, hey, look it’s Father WhataPity…”

“Father what?”

“WhataPity. It’s a thing. In every parish there’s this one priest, you know, who, well, behind his back half the parishioners say ‘Oh, there goes Father WhataPity’.” 

“That’s not true. That’s not a thing,” Steve was grinning at him now, but making no move to disrobe.

“It is. You can ask my ma if you don’t believe me. Ask anyone here, I’m sure it’s not Jersey-specific, babe, it’s a _well known_ thing and…”

“You were lusting after me? In my twelve dollar outfit from the costume shop? And you didn’t know it was me?”

“I was not lusting, I was simply appreciating a fine specimen and…I would love it if you would leave it at that. For once, maybe? I also, really, really need you to not walk into our bedroom with that still on you because if you do…I don’t know if or when I can ever go down on you again.”

“You’ve got a Madonna-Whore thing happening now? You’re telling me if I walk up these stairs…” 

Steve started to, and Danny darted in front of him and they were both chuckling now but Danny was pushing him back, hard, and…

Just when he thought Steve was going to fight him on it, really give him grief, he disrobed instead. Slowly. Very. Eyes on Danny the whole time, never leaving his as he tossed the collar then the shirt and then the pants onto the sofa one by one.

“Okay, um… wow. Thanks. On a couple of levels. Could you maybe do a turn for me? Like a 360?”

“Are you serious?” Steve asked, standing there in Danny’s favorite boxer briefs; the deep blue ones with the black trim.

“Yes. I need a palate cleanser. I need to wipe the whole image of….”

He did. Steve did an actual turn for him. Yeah, he added a sarcastic he-man muscle pose in there to make Danny laugh but…

“Thanks, babe,” Danny headed for the stairs; back to earth, back home, brain eraser applied.

“Wait a minute. We haven’t talked about your outfit yet.”

“Hospital nursing scrubs?” Danny tugged at them. “So what?”

“So I always had a thing for the nurses…”

“As in…”

“As in all of them.”

“Ah…” Danny looked away as Steve stepped in and got hands under his top, fingers tracing. “I see.”

“Always wanted to ask if I could take ‘em home and show them where it hurt. You know?”

“Tell me you’re not thinking that every time we go to a hospital on a case?”

“Focus, Danny. Seriously, you can worry about _anything, anytime_. Can’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“Forgiven. So, can I?”

“Can you what?”

“Go show nurse Danny where it hurts?”

It wasn’t his fault he took off up the stairs so fast. A guy only got offers like that just so often. And besides…he was pretty sure Steve was shaking his head at him behind his back.


	22. Wherever they are....

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the Weekend Challenge on the 1_million_words comm. The challenge being to write a fic inspired by a one-hit-wonder song, Tubthumping by chumbawamba. Thanks to Haldoor for the prompt, I'd forgotten how much I loved that song! :). Also, sorry I've been writing mostly short and sweet, zero angst or sexy lately...just the way the spring has gone. I've had requests and....I have some ideas in the works.

“What did they say?” Steve stopped picking at his own fingernails when he saw Danny walking his way down the clinic hallway, the nervous habit replaced by a small wave of relief. 

Danny was going slowly, maybe, and hobbling a bit but there was no wincing. And on a scale of cranky to in-freaking-tolerable, Danny looked to be barely past cranky. 

“The shoulder’s twisted, not torn. Knee … we’ll have to see, hopefully it resolves on its own. If not…. I get to come back to this benighted place for another MRI.”

Steve had stood while Danny talked, nodding down at him, watching Danny’s face turn from bland, even, and imparting information, to angry disbelief.

“You are not going to lecture me? About fighting back against those perps?”

“You’re right, D, I’m not.”

“You are. You freaking are!”

“I’d never lecture, never say that you shouldn’t ever fight back, but…”

“I should rely on you instead? To come to my rescue, my knight in shining…”

“Sometimes, yes,” Steve didn’t quite shout it. “You’re barely past the PT for your injuries from the building collapse, and that guy you were fighting? Three times your size.”

“You’re going there? Now? With me? Size?”

“I’m just saying, Danny… it was a bad choice. In this specific situation. Not lecturing.”

“How is this even my life?” Danny started walking for the door and the parking lot. “Take me home, okay? And maybe we can go in silence? I’d enjoy that, for my part.”

“Girlfriend coming over tonight?”

“No, she’s…. out for Karaoke. Girl’s night.”

“You’re hurt, and she….”

“I may have downplayed my injuries. I might have said I…tripped and twisted my knee.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“Because I did. That’s why.”

Steve watched him walking for a second, sizing up whether this was him really wanting home and silence or…..

He gave Danny a soft push with the heel of his hand. 

“Come out with us. Chin and Kono and me.. and some of their friends. We’re going to the place with the drinks and the steaks and….”

“No. Thanks.”

“Danny. C’mon.”

“You’re afraid I’m reverting, aren’t you?” They were in the parking lot now and Danny had slowed down to watch for cars. “It’s Friday and you think I’m going to spend the weekend on the couch, moping, then spend the weekend alone, moping, like it’s three years ago and I’m the hermit in training I was then?”

“Are you a ghost writer, Danny? On the side? ‘Cause I feel like you’re putting an awful lot of words in my mouth….”

“Fine. You are the straw that stirs the drink, big guy, so…. let’s go.”

~*~

It was one of those timeless Friday nights; shoulder season for the tourists meaning the beach was relatively empty, sweet breeze in the air, music from the hotel bars and patios drifting on it and the sound of the waves complimenting it all.

They could have sat there all night, and they nearly did.

“How you holding up?” Steve took the chair next to Danny when Kono vacated it, nodding toward the drink in Danny’s hand. “Whiskey to vodka to beer, huh?”

“I have shoulder pain to kill and no, I didn’t take the pain pills. And I won’t drive, okay?

“Yeah. Okay. Just making sure you’re … doesn’t matter. Feeling better about the day?”

“Honestly? I still feel like I’m pissing the night away. And maybe my life, too. But at least I’m not doing it alone, so…thank you. For being my knight in shining armor. Again.”

“I do try, Danny,” Steve said it with a strong dose of false humility in his voice and smiled at the huff and the grin it earned him. “I’ll always try.”

“I didn’t tell her…because I don’t want to go there with her. You know? Explaining how dangerous it can be, telling her not to worry and watching her worry anyway. I …like her but…how do I put this without sounding like an ass? I don’t like her enough to want her to be that worried. Honestly, it even freaked me out when she showed up at the building collapse. Too soon, you know? Like, creepy overly attached girlfriend too soon.”

“Wow. Uh… that’s not a good sign, is it?”

“No, my friend. I don’t think it is.”

“You’ll find your person, Danny.”

“You think so?”

“I do. I really believe it.”

“That’s an interesting choice of words, ‘your person,’” Danny was watching him with that careful, deep stare, his detective eyes and Steve’s seemed to feel it made this a good time to scan the shoreline. “You think you’ll find your person, Steve? The one you actually want to share everything with?”

“Yes,” He knew it had taken him a second and a half too long to answer, and that Danny had noticed. “I believe I will.”

“Here’s to them…” Danny raised his glass, forcing back his gaze, and Steve relaxed at the amused warmth in those blue eyes. “Wherever they are. Right?”

“Right. Cheers.”

“Cheers, babe.”


	23. A table, a chair, and a detective

“Danny… hey….wake up. C’mon, you with me?”

That’s what he heard eventually – once the words took shape with actual consonants and syllables and stopped sounding like burbling gibberish. He felt like he was back in that day when he'd wiped out surfing, when Steve had tugged him by the wrist, past the tree line on the beach and they had...

But no; they were not in the ocean or on the beach; he was in bed, surfacing from a perfectly peaceful sleep, Steve shaking his shoulder.

“Yeah, I… uh…. I'm up. What the hell? You okay?”

Steve was turning on his side, wrapping an arm over him, spooning him. That was convenient – it gave him a minute to rub the sleep out of his eyes and try to think straight.

“I’m okay, Danny, I just need to know if… you’re pissed. You know? That I put out the fire?”

It made so little sense, he lay there for a good ten seconds, silent, still rubbing at his eyes, working back through the afternoon's events.

“Why the hell would I be pissed at you for…”

“Cause you had it, you know? You almost had it out and I…jumped in and…after that you seemed like you were. Annoyed. The rest of the night."

"You do recognize the basic fallacy of waking me up to ask me if I'm pissed off?" As good as they felt, Danny rolled out of Steve's arms and onto his back, eyes on the ceiling. "It's no secret I'm a man who values his rest so if I wasn't peeved before, Steven..."

"Forget it. I'm sorry I disturbed your prec..."

"No, don't forget it. Let's pick this apart. 'Cause the reason you're all nerved up, why you woke me? It's got absolutely nothing to do with what you think it has to do with. I'm sure of it."

"Oh, here we go. Do you have your detective hat on? Or your tinfoil, unlicensed-therapist hat?"

"First of all, you wrecked my good night's sleep so shut up. And second, an understanding of human psychology is absolutely key to good detective work and you know it."

"And yet you're so good at the job without it. It's really commendable."

"Again, I would say, 'shut up.'" Danny got pillows behind him and settled in. "So... this all started when I got overenthusiastic with the lighter fluid for the grill and caused a small...tiny, really, fireball..."

"Two feet high," Steve corrected. 

"And in overreacting to that event, I kinda spun around and the flameage followed the spatters of lighter fluid and caught our brand new Koa wood barbecue prep table on fire..."

"That was a nice table."

"It was a nice table, which is why I was pissy with myself the rest of the evening. I was thinking do we junk it or resurface it? What I was not thinking, to any degree at all, is 'why did my controlling boyfriend feel the need to jump in and help douse it when I almost had it out myself.' Because I'm not a perfectionist. That's your thing not mine, the silent self-berating..."

Danny felt his hands going, doing their interpretive dance as he peeled apart the layers of mind-fuck that sometimes seemed to make up about half of Steve.

"In point of fact, though, you weren't upset about the table or the putting-out of the fire, not at all," Danny went on. "You were laughing. We both were laughing. You only got upset when we realized one of the Adirondack chairs was smoldering, too..."

He knew he was close to tonight's key layer of pain by the way Steve batted at his hands, pushing one of them down onto Danny's chest to stop their dance.

"Were the chairs from when you were a kid? Did Doris buy them way back when?" 

He heard how the question came out, his own voice soft, conspiratorial, and he heard Steve huff at him in response.

"Why do you always have to bring everything around to my mom, D?"

"Why? Seriously, you're asking why?" 

"No, the chairs are not that old. My dad must have bought them a year or two before he... Before I moved home."

"Then why would you care? How could the chair have taken on any big meaning in only three or four..."

It hit him like a rock, and he looked up, silent, to see Steve watching him intently, mouth frowning and eyes dancing, the 'little boy lost' look all over his face.

"Ohhh. It was my chair. That caught fire. That's it. The chair I sit in all the time was burning and..."

"Go back to sleep."

"In your head it was like I was burning. Or we were. About to go up in flames. Symbolically. Buddy, you can stop it-- stop that, okay? I won't leave you. Ever. "

"You can't promise that. No one can..."

"Disaster aside, yes I can."

"No one can. Life happens. We don't know what..."

"Can promise it. Just did. Really meant it." 

"Yeah?"

There would be a time for talking it through, reinforcing the fact with words and maybe more. Maybe something they both had to sign. But that time wasn't 1:40 in the morning. Danny got up and over him, pushing back sheets, feeling Steve warm and hard, body sleepy-loose under him.

"You don't have to..." Steve objected but his voice gave it away, the tight note of want in the four words, the way it trailed off into a swallowed sigh as Danny rocked against him.

"I want you on your side. Okay? Turn for me?"

He reached back to his own nightstand as Steve slid that way, long top leg bending, scissoring for him. By the time he had him slicked him up, Steve was half on his side and half on his stomach, the perfect angle for access, for Danny to climb Mount McGarrett. 

"Nice and slow, okay?" Danny murmured after Steve finished rippling, grunting at the sensation of being taken, being full. "Wanna enjoy this awhile."

Danny stayed close to him the whole time, body and hands holding him down, in place. He indulged in the pleasures of tugging his hair and nipping the spots on his neck and shoulder where he usually just kissed and sucked. He let his possessive feelings into his own voice, his sounds.

He knew the message was received in the way Steve took it all in, body shaking as he pushed back but almost silent, only one low, strangled groan when he lost it, hips stuttering, legs stretching, back arching. Danny shouted at how good that felt around his cock, pressing Steve fully on his belly and giving in to the urge to thrust harder as he came.

"We should buy a gas grill," Danny said it against his skin as he pulled out of him.

"No," Steve didn't move, voice floaty and relieved. "Steaks don't taste as good on a gas grill."


	24. Cat and Butterfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written to a combo photo and word prompt for the 1_Million_Words weekend challenge. The pic is in the end notes. The word was Crestfallen. Thanks to Haldoor for the lovely prompts!

Danny woke to the bed shaking with…something. What? Steve crying? No way, uh-uh. Steve, should he be in the unlikely need of a good cry, would absolutely go hide in the bathroom. Or the garage. Or Tahiti, maybe. 

“Babe, what’s up?” Danny shook him, then found himself grinning softly at the sight of Steve on his belly, arms under his pillow, laughing hard but silently. “What’s so funny?”

“Had a dream,” Steve said.

“Oh.” 

They were new at this: Not the being in bed together, but the waking up at odd hours together. It was, after all, only Danny’s third week living with him. He wasn’t sure what Steve would prefer – him asking for more detail, or him letting Steve drift right back off. 

“The sky was …so blue,” Steve went on, and solved Danny’s conundrum. “Sapphire, like the kind you only seem to get in cooler climates-- Canada, the northeast. You know?”

“Yeah, I miss that. Deep black-blue. Twilights that last an hour or more…”

“And the moon was huge! Like it was….eighty percent closer.”

“Okay, that’s fine but it’s not…funny.”

“I was a cat.”

“A what?”

“A cat. And you were a butterfly.”

“Um, ex-squeeze me?”

“A …really mouthy butterfly. I was perched on a fence, reaching for you, to touch you, to get you. You were babbling at me like a cartoon character with beautiful wings and a gruff voice, telling me to 'keep my frigging paws to myself.' But then… I guess the cat part really kicked in and….I wanted to eat you.”

“Ah, so it was a sex dream?”

“No. By eat I mean get a paw on you, slam you to the ground and pull off your wings with my claws.”

“Woah, that is… so not sexy. And disturbingly detailed in its violence.”

Steve was still chuckling, but Danny wasn’t. He looked over and saw the crestfallen expression on Danny’s face and…oh, no.

“I screwed up,” Steve’s hand went to his own forehead. “I didn’t put on my Danno Filter and now you think….”

“It doesn’t take Sigmund Freaking Freud to interpret this, babe. You’re on the fence. I moved in and now …you’re on the fence and want to maybe kill me.”

“No, no, no,” Steve rolled, rolling him over too, pressing tight against Danny’s back and scooting down to kiss his shoulder, his neck. “Don’t say that. I think… no, I’m _really_ sure there’s another way to read it.”

“Like how?”

“You had wings, Danny. I wanted to pin you down and rip them off. Doesn’t take Freud to interpret that, either, does it?”

“I will not leave you,” Danny said simply – didn’t move, felt Steve pull in that extra inch tighter. “Okay? If this goes south…you’re the one who’ll end it. Not me. Ever.”

Steve didn’t answer out loud, only nodded hard enough that Danny could feel it against his neck. They Steve scooted back north and wrapped around him like his cat, like the big, sweet, sleepy leopard he was.

They were both three quarters back out when Steve added an afterthought, voice heavy, dopey.

“The moon was …perfect. It felt hopeful. The moon part…felt really good.”

Danny fell asleep vowing to find one way each day to subtly remind Steve he wouldn’t go. Not forever. Just until he didn’t need a reminder anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	25. Gotcha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gift fic for Simplyn2deep for her Weekend Challenge fics! Her prompt for the reward fic was: "Upon entering HQ, the floor is littered with papers, important documents and the like. There is a single bloody handprint on the wall. Tell what has happened either before or after."
> 
> This will seem out of character, maybe, but ...consider what monsters the two of them would turn into if an actual practical joke war broke out? It would ...not be pretty. ;)

Steve knew he didn’t have a lot of time to play with, but he wanted to get this right. 

He re-examined the manner in which he’d scattered the large pile of scrap paper from beside the copy machine, and decided to move it all around some more. A few of the piles were a little too …neatly piled. Others were too blatantly sloppy, with not enough print on them and no letterhead. Didn’t look legit.

Push some here, slide others there…..

“Good,” he stomped on it all to leave footprints from the dust in the parking lot. “Better.”

He waited ‘til the last moment for the capper: _Uncapping_ the squat, glass jar, digging fingers into its sweetly deep, purple-red contents, smearing layer after layer of it on his opposite palm and fingers.

It was all about timing, now. He knew from their text message that they would have pulled into the HQ parking lot a minute, maybe less ago. He knew, from the message of five minutes prior that they were all more than a tiny bit perturbed he hadn’t replied to the eight before that one.

Danny’s ‘why aren’t you answering, asshole?’ made him smile, picturing it….

He waited until he heard footsteps down the hall, a thread of Danny’s voice in the air. Then he spread the rest of the contents of the jar over his shirt, across his left side, slapped his well-coated hand against the wall and half slid, half fell to the ground. 

Chuckling.

~*~

“Son of a…..” Chin had seen him first. Steve could hear Chin’s gun being drawn, could picture him bolting toward their offices, looking for intruders.

“Oh, no! Oh….God!” Kono. He felt bad, putting her through this. A little bad. Collateral damage, though. 

“Son of a BITCH….” Danny, sounding upset, too upset to hide it. Steve enjoyed that for all it was worth – for all it said that Danny never was able to.

It was a good thing he could live in the moment because it’s all the satisfaction he got.

“No…put down the phone.” Danny’s voice, a new kind of pissed.

“But ….what?” Kono. “Why?”

“Because I pack Grace’s lunches sometimes…” Steve cracked his eyelids enough to see Danny scraping fingers through the ‘bloody’ handprint on the wall and licking it up. 

“Danny, God, ewwww…what are you…..”

“PB and J. That’s what I fix for her. This….is so _not_ funny, Steven. You have zero idea how not funny this is….”

“Are you kidding?” Chin. Sounding pissed and amused at the same time.

“Not kidding. Not blood. Raspberry,” Danny said.

Steve felt the toe of Danny’s shoe in his ‘wounded side, and rolled over grinning. 

“You rat bastard,” Danny got more of the jelly off the wall and Steve twisted away, pretty sure Danny was prepared to smear it all over his face. “I’m so gonna…”

“This is it! This is where this _ends_ ,” Kono, sounding supremely pissed in a way he’d never heard her before. Uh-oh. “This is huge step too damn far. Your practical joke war is hereby declared OVER. By ME. Do you understand? It’s OVER.”

“Oh, no,” Danny got on the floor to pin Steve with his legs, to give Steve’s face and hair a good coating with the preserves, Steve twisting around more but laughing too hard to get away. “It’s not over. It’s so _on_. You have ….no idea….how _on_ this is….”

“Aw, c’mon, D…that was….good. I _got_ you. Admit it.”

“Bastard.”

“It was really nice, how worried you were. Worried for me, you know?”

“ _You_ better worry, buddy, because when I get you back? You’re never gonna see it coming….”

“Oh, lord….” Chin leaving. Heading for his office. “Help us.”

Kono was already gone. 

Steve was a tad worried, if he could admit it, about what Danny might come up with. 

He knew he should be more concerned with when Kono might voluntarily talk to either of them again.

Still … watching Danny stalk away….. _so_ worth it.


End file.
